Two Ideas for Scoring a Great Apartment in a Competitive Market
Posted on: 8 February 2017
If you live in a city where the housing market is competitive, you know how challenging it can be to score a nice apartment at a reasonable price. Chances are good that once you find a place, there are at least a dozen or so people in line ahead of you. However, you don't have to resort to sorcery to get an edge over the competition. Here are two things you can do to increase your chances of getting a great apartment in a competitive market.
Try a Little Bribery
Landlords want to keep their risks as low as possible, so they try to pick tenants with the best qualifications (e.g. high income, great credit score). The trouble is that people may all look the same on paper (e.g. same income and credit score). In this situation, you will need to make yourself stand out, and you can do that by offering the landlord a little something extra he or she can't or won't get from the other potential renters.
This has nothing to do with illegal bribes and everything to do with finding ways to sweeten the deal. For instance, if you visit the landlord's social media page and notice he or she is a big fan of a certain type of chocolate, you can send the person a box as a thank you gift for considering your application. This is a small gesture that can have a big impact on the landlord and may lead to the person offering you the apartment.
Other ideas for making yourself more enticing to the landlord include offering to pay several months rent in advance, paying for some utilities that would otherwise be included (e.g. trash pickup), or offering to help manage the property, if appropriate.
Tap Into Your Network
Living in a big city means there's a good chance you know someone who may be friends or acquaintances with landlords in the area. You can definitely get the jump on rentals in the area by reaching out to those landlords through you network. Not only can you score an apartment before it goes on the market, but having a mutual friend recommend you may make the landlord more amendable to renting to you rather than a stranger he or she has nothing in common with.
Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites are good ways to determine if you and a potential landlord have friends in common. Remember, though, you still have to make sure your qualifications for the apartment are on point; otherwise, the landlord may not want to rent to you regardless of who you know.
For more tips on getting a great apartment in a competitive market, contact a property manager like those at Gerber Management Services.
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